If every enquiry arrives somewhere different and nobody knows who should answer, a robot can spread the mess faster. That’s all.
What to automate first
Do the job once with pen and paper
Take the last enquiry you received. Draw its route from arrival to someone’s reply. Include the note you copied, the email you forwarded and the question you asked because a detail was missing. Every arrow must represent something that actually happened.
- Remove the steps nobody uses to make a decision.
- Agree who handles each exception.
- Automate the repeated step that already has a clear rule.
Try it with a real form
For example, each form submission can create a task with a name, message and date. First decide what happens if it arrives twice or the email is missing. If you don’t know who checks those cases, put the task in a review queue. The robot can bring the paper to the desk. Someone has to own the desk.
You can teach a robot where to leave the task. To know what to do with an empty email field, it still needs a rule.
A way to check whether it’s worth it: time five ordinary cases and two odd ones. If a normal case saves a minute but every exception costs you twenty, start by fixing the exceptions. That’s usually where the interesting work is.
If you’re not sure which enquiries are worth following up, start by measuring what happens after a visit.